Battery-free eye-tracking glasses developed at Dartmouth College could create an even more realistic experience for augmented reality enthusiasts.
By using near-infrared lights and photodiodes, Dartmouth's DartNets Lab has created an energy-efficient, wearable system that tracks rapid eye movements and allows hands-free input of system commands.
The glasses, which can also help monitor human health, are being introduced at MobiCom 2018 taking place from October 29-November 2 in New Delhi, India.
To make the Dartmouth system work, researchers needed to detect the trajectory, velocity, and acceleration of the eye's pupil without cameras. Near-infrared lights are used to illuminate the eye from various directions while photodiodes sense patterns of reflected light. Those reflections are used to infer the pupil's position and diameter in real time through a lightweight algorithm based on supervised learning.
With power consumption that is hundreds of times lower than current systems, the Dartmouth eye tracker can be powered by energy harvested from indoor lighting, meaning that no batteries are required. The battery-free eye-tracker system is also easier to integrate into a regular pair of glasses.